Burnt earth or a torched theatre? A perpetual pedestal supporting ruler turned into shrines. Bewitching orations are blurring supremacy claims and hiding a meaningless void whose real voice is muffled. Words as a persuasive art – in propaganda, military an economic corruption and in the theatre.

Politics are also a theatrical game but their consequences usually result in exhaustion and death which no applause will resurrect. Beyond doubt, Caesar was murdered in the Pompeius Theatre – even today one can see in Rome a few of its remaining stones. Does the rhetoric end at the point where the theatre starts? Starts the theatre there, where the rhetoric ends?

Brutus murdered Julius Caesar, his best friend. He commits that deed out of the laudable tenet that the tyrannical power of an individual should never endanger common walfare and liberty. However he ignores to include the people in his power scheme. Finally Brutus, just like his co-conspirator Cassius, escapes imprisonment in that he commits suicide. Marcus Antonius, climbing out of the plebus and able to control it, is a superb actor. He seizes power before the next the usurper has the chance to replace him...

Romeo Castellucci was born 1960 in Cesena near Bologna and is the artistic director of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. Founded by him in 1981, this troupe is today by far the most radical company of the contemporary ltalian theatre. William Shakespeares' drama »Julius Caesar« was written in 1599 and is a reflection of Elizabethan reality. In fragments of the Shakespearean drama, Castelluci draws amazing parallels between an important period of his own Italian history and our present time. The performance was hailed during the May 1997 Vienna Festival Weeks as its climax.